'Snow White' wins the Forqué Awards

Pablo Berger's feature won twice as it won the award for best film and best female performance with a splendid Maribe Verdú in her role as stepmother.

snow white won over the jury of the Forqué Awards, awards established 18 years ago by EGEDA with the aim of contributing to the dissemination and promotion of Spanish cinema and

delivered this Monday at the Teatros del Canal in Madrid. Pablo Berger's feature won twice as it won the award for best film and best female performance with a splendid Maribe Verdú. The “stepmother” highlighted the professionalism of her co-star in snow white, Macarena García, and Carmina Barrios, for Carmina or burst, both candidates for these awards. Verdú thanked Berger “for creating a unique environment and demonstrating that a shoot does not have to be a path of torture.”

Berger received the award, worth 30,000 euros, from the actors Marisa Paredes and Hugo Silva, beating the other three candidate films: Impossible, by Juan Antonio Bayona; Group 7, by Alberto Rodríguez; and The artist and the model, by Fernando Trueba.

As for male interpretation, the Forqués wanted to recognize the veteran José Sacristán for his role in Madrid, 1987, beating the other two finalists: Jean Rochefort for The artist and the model, and Antonio de la Torre, for Group 7.

The EGEDA Special Award for Best Documentary or Animated Feature Film, worth 6,000 euros, went to Tadeo Jones.

The president of EGEDA, Enrique Cerezo, highlighted in his speech before an audience that included the Minister of Education, Culture and Sports, Ignacio Wert and the Secretary of State for Culture, José María Lasalle, the value of our cinema to reinforce the Spain brand. Cerezo has called on Culture to achieve greater collaboration between the industry and the Administration.

In this edition, 106 fiction feature films, 40 documentaries and 11 animated feature films, released between December 1, 2011 and November 30, 2012, participated in the Forqué Awards.

Gerardo Herrero, Gold Medal

The EGEDA Gold Medal, which rewards a producer for an entire career in Spanish cinema, has been awarded in this edition to director and producer Gerardo Herrero.

Born in Madrid in 1953, Herrero graduated in Law and, after filming two short films (The course of the stars ‐1980‐ y wild frames ‐1981‐) founded the production company Tornasol Films in 1987. Since then, he has produced more than a hundred feature films, becoming one of the most active producers on the current film scene, and directed fifteen films.

He started in film production with the mouth of the wolf (1988), a Spanish-Peruvian drama by Francisco J. Lombardi that won the Silver Shell for best director at the San Sebastián Festival. After a dozen productions, among which are Madregilda (Francisco Regueiro) y Land and freedom (Ken Loach), his first great critical and public success was obtained in 1995 with the Cuban film Guantanamera, by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, a comedy filmed in Cuba about a family that must travel the entire island to bury their recently deceased aunt in their hometown. His directorial debut was Detour to paradise (1994), after which came titles such as Malena es un nombre de tango, based on the novel of the same name by Almudena Grandes, The reasons of my friends, The Galíndez mystery o blood in the snow.

A great defender of co-productions between Spain and Latin America, his collaborations with the other side of the Atlantic have resulted in masterpieces such as Martin (Hache) (1997), by Adolfo Aristarain; The colonel has no one to write to him (1999), by Arturo Ripstein; burnt silver (2000), by Marcelo Piñeyro; The bride's son (2001), by Juan José Campanella; Common places (2002), by Adolfo Aristarain, and The secret of his eyes (2009), by Juan José Campanella, for which he won the Hollywood Oscar.

Between 1993 and 1994 he presided over the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain; He is a founding member of the Community of Madrid Film School and promoter of the Ibermedia Program, a fund for the development of the Ibero-American audiovisual industry. Between 1997 and 1999, he was president of the Federation of Spanish Audiovisual Producers Association (FAPAE) and, until 2001, general secretary of the Ibero-American Federation of Cinematographic and Audiovisual Producers.

The Argentine thriller about to premiere in Argentina Thesis on a homicide, with Ricardo Darín and Alberto Amman, is immersed in the production of Pandaeyes, a horror film directed by Isabel Coixet and starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Claire Forlani, and Leonor Watling, among others.